from them that again and again they regain their strength.

And if we recollect this we need not be much disturbed by our apparent
differences and misunderstandings. After all, they are the necessary
result of freedom, and what do the Bible and Greece mean but moral and
intellectual freedom? We want no formal and artificial unity: to us
change, progress, conflict and division are the breath of our life. Just
as the cluster of little towns in the Aegean islands and valleys prized
before all things their political and intellectual independence, so is
it with these small countries nestling on the shores of the Atlantic.
Politically they have always refused to acquiesce in the establishment
of any common authority over them, whether it comes from outside or even
from among themselves, and so also they always repudiate the ascendancy
of any single or partial intellectual doctrine. Each party and each
nation adds its own contribution; all have a common origin, and all
spring from the same root. Since the bonds have been relaxed and the
dominion of the Universal Church overthrown, we see nothing from the
rivalry of political systems and passing schemes of thought; they chase
each other like the storms which arise from the Atlantic and pass in
quick succession over our shores. It is this change and succession which
is to us the breath of our life: we know nothing of the steady static
weather of the great continents, where rain and drought have each their
measured and settled space: and we know nothing, and will know nothing,
of the formal and authoritative rule combining all Europe into one
realm, whether political or intellectual. For we know that unity and
permanence does not belong to this life, and our nearest approach to
truth is to be found not in a settled system but in the thousandfold
interactions of half-truths and partial systems.

Life like a dome of many-coloured glass
Stains the white radiance of eternity
Until death shatters it to fragments.

A unity there is, but it is the unity of the countless and varied
flowers that carpet the meadows in spring, the unity of the common
spirit of life which animates them all.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Leach, _The Schools of Medieval England_. Methuen.

Mullinger, J. Bass, _The Schools of Charles the Great_.

Paulsen, _Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts_.

Rashdall, _Universities in the Middle Ages_. Clarendon Press.

Foster Watson, _Grammar Schools_. Ca